IS GAIA DEAD?

Obviously with ‘tongue in cheek’ Tim Blair of The Daily Telegraph (October 4, 2016) asked the question “Is Gaia Dead?” and went on to quote James Lovelock (now 97 years of age) who recently said “Climate alarmism is not remotely scientific”. 

Of course Lovelock was not “the great planet-spirit’s creator” – it was a term he used which Geoffrey Dobbs thought was a mistake.     In Greek mythology Gaia was the mother goddess who presided over the earth. She was the mate of Uranus and the mother of the Titans and the Cyclopes.

Tim Blair writes:  “A 1966 Time magazine cover famously asked: “Is God dead?” Who knows, but it sure isn’t looking very good for dear old Gaia, God's Greens-voting special needs cousin.  The great planet-spirit’s creator has now completely abandoned his former faith, presumably consigning Gaia to the grave:
 
James Lovelock, inventor of Gaia Theory and godfather of the modern environmental movement, has finally renounced the green religion.
 
Climate alarmism, he says, is not “remotely scientific”; one volcano could make more difference to global warming than humans ever could; the computer models are “unreliable”; greens have behaved “deplorably”; and anyone who tries to “predict more than five to ten years is a bit of an idiot.”
 
Though this is not the first time Lovelock has rowed back on his earlier climate catastrophism – in 2012 he was already admitting “I made a mistake” – it’s his most emphatic rejection yet of the green litany.
Lovelock, 97, ascribes the dramatic change in his once fervently alarmist beliefs to the fact that he has “grown up.”
 
If 97 is the age when reality hits, Tim Flannery should finally come to his senses sometime during early 2053.  
Please read on…
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/is-gaia-dead/news-story/61e052eb2f890d05d3d943687e2ae831
 
Geoffrey Dobbs and the Gaia Hypothesis
I never cease to be amazed at the way the media ‘beat up’ a story or even history.
Geoffrey Dobbs wrote of James Lovelock and his ‘gaia’ story in the 1980’s.  Geoffrey was a biologist as well as a social crediter who edited the Home Journal along with his wife Elizabeth for many a year.  His article on James Lovelock and the ‘Gaia’ Hypothesis is well worth a read.
 
Just to tempt you here is a snippet from The Local World, Part III - that Chapter “GAIA: Goddess, Organism or Association?” which forms part of The Local World:
 
Hypothesis into Religion
“… In the same way, Margulis's hypothesis had to await the development of the electron microscope to the point where the fine structure of bacteria and of organelles could be studied in the light of our knowledge of the structure of DNA. But if we accept the current evolutionary genesis story of the creation of life on this planet, including its early prokaryotic Age, it is hard to see how otherwise the eukaryotic cell with its vital organelles, which is now the basis of all larger life-forms, including ourselves, could have arisen. And in that event every living thing above the bacterial level is not a simple organism but a co-operative far more ancient and intimate than the lichens.
 
As with the Gaia hypothesis itself, we are here still dealing with a hypothesis, not with something which can be proven, now or perhaps ever. But it fits in well with most of the known facts, is mentally stimulating and suggestive of further lines of enquiry, and has all the signs of a constructive and valuable advance in thinking. Moreover, no equally convincing alternative has so far been suggested.
 
What James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis together seem to have achieved is to round off and pull together the recent trend towards ecological understanding in a way which is bound to influence the direction of biological thought for generations, probably as much as have evolutionary theory and molecular biology. What is to be hoped is that, unlike these, the Gaia concept will not be erected into a religion…
Read further:  http://alor.org/Race,%20Culture%20and%20Nation/The%20Local%20World%20Part%20III%20.htm

According to JAMES DELINGPOLE 1 Oct 2016 
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/10/01/james-lovelock-godfather-green-climate-change-religion-totally-unscientific/
 
“James Lovelock, inventor of Gaia Theory and godfather of the modern environmental movement, has finally renounced the green religion.  Climate alarmism, he says, is not “remotely scientific”; one volcano could make more difference to global warming than humans ever could; the computer models are “unreliable”; greens have behaved “deplorably”; and anyone who tries to “predict more than five to ten years is a bit of an idiot.”
 
Though this is not the first time Lovelock has rowed back on his earlier climate catastrophism – in 2012 he was already admitting “I made a mistake” – it’s his most emphatic rejection yet of the green litany.  Lovelock, 97, ascribes the dramatic change in his once fervently alarmist beliefs to the fact that he has “grown up.” 
 
Only ten years ago – when the inventor, scientist and environmentalist was a mere spring chicken of 87 – Lovelock argued in his book The Revenge of Gaia that mankind was doomed.  Because of global warming, he predicted, “billions will die” and the few survivors would have to retreat to the Arctic which would be one of the few habitable places left on earth.
 
But now he admits to being “laid back about climate change.”
 “CO2 is going up, but nowhere near as fast as they thought it would. The computer models just weren’t reliable. In fact I’m not sure the whole thing isn’t crazy, this climate change. You’ve only got to look at Singapore. It’s two-and-a-half times higher than the worst-case scenario for climate change, and it’s one of the most desirable cities in the world to live in.”
 
Besides, he says, nature is more powerful than the computer models:
It’s only got to take one sizable volcano to erupt and all the models, everything else, is right off the board.  Lovelock was speaking in an interview with the fervently alarmist Guardian whose interviewer Decca Aitkenhead was naturally somewhat taken aback by his views which she ascribed in part to his temperament as an “incorrigible subversive.”
 
But Lovelock himself insists that it is simply a question of looking at the evidence.
One experience that has sharply concentrated his thoughts is the cost of heating his home, an old mill in Devon. When the heating bills rose to £6,000 for just six months, he realised that he would have to downsize and has now moved to a smaller cottage on Chesil Beach in Dorset. This claim has brought him into conflict with another green guru, the chunky knit Guardianista George Monbiot…
 
Besides Monbiot, Lovelock finds time for a little dig at yet another fervent green catastrophist the Prince of Wales:
He was once invited to Buckingham Palace, where he told Princess Anne: “Your brother nearly killed me.” Having read that Prince Charles had installed grass-burning boilers at Highgrove, Lovelock had tried one in his house. “It’s supposed to smoulder and keep the place warm; but it doesn’t, because it goes out, and clouds and clouds of smoke come out.” He giggles. “Princess Anne thought this was hilariously funny.”…”